Not just pan-India, southern film heroes are now global

The new millennium brought with it tremendous changes for the entertainment-seeking crowd in India. After the first multiplex was opened in Delhi in 1997, this format of movie-watching replete with high-quality audio and visual impact and munchies to go along as the proceedings unfolded on the silver screen became popular rapidly.

Two decades into the 21st century, with the pandemic confining people to their homes, the outlets for entertainment became more widespread as a consequence and the over-the-top (OTT) platforms became a great source of relief for millions round the world. With sustained exposure to multilingual films from all across Indian languages and also the world, the Indian film audience have seemingly reappraised and widened their viewership preferences to include the multilingual southern cinema on all formats – both the big and small screens, including their mobile phones.

Increasingly, in the last decade, more Hindi films are being spearheaded by nearly 10 southern film stars, from Dulquer Salman at one end and Prabhas at the other with a Dhanush, Vijay Sethupathi and Naga Chaitanya thrown in to play characters of considerable weight and scope. The recent release of Dulquer's 'Chup: Revenge of the Artist' on a popular OTT platform and garnering impressive eyeballs within the first few days of its streaming is proof enough of this for the present. Playing the title role of a revenge-seeking victim, DQ as he is popularly hailed, dubbed in his own voice and made a tremendous impression with his unaffected and easy style of acting, never mind the body language of the southern male creeping in now and then.

It was not like this even about 15 years ago, when the maverick film director Ram Gopal Varma introduced 'Kichcha' Sudeep in his ghost thriller 'Phoonk' in 2008. He went on to repeat the Kannada hero in a few more films like his 'Rakta Charitra' series till Sudeep got a break with Sallu Bhai's ' Dabangg 3'. He has a forthcoming film 'Kabzaa' to be released by end 2022.

Even if this can be considered a bright spark, what happened with Ram Charan in 2013 with his bilingual 'Zanjeer' was clearly a disaster. This was after the 30- year- old Malayalam hero Prithviraj made his not-so-successful bow into Hindi with 'Aiyyaa' in 2012, co-starring Rani Mukherjee, four years his senior in age.

Just a few years ago, amidst the overwhelming presence of Khan heroes, who were into their hi-speed phase in Hindi cinema, the earlier era south Indian film idols, who were not readily accepted for more than 50 years in Hindi cinema were still around. Till 2005, Rajinikanth, (who has had the maximum of 27 releases in Hindi between 1983- 2000) and Kamal Haasan, who made a bilingual 'Mumbai Express' for the first ever time in Indian cinema with a digital camera were putting up a token show in Bollywood.

The new kids on the block made the Hindi film viewers sit up and take notice when Dhanush came up with a super performance in ' Raanjhanaa' in 2013 and is still considered hot property by a dedicated set of producers and directors in Bollywood. His recent film project is to be a trilingual in Hindi, Telugu and Tamil with Sekhar Kammula helming the venture.

Hearteningly, Prabhas, whose Hindi film launch in 'Saaho' took 17 years after his Telugu debut in 2002 is counted among one of the exciting prospects in Bollywood. The modern-day A-lister Vijay Deverakonda too would have gone the distance immediately had his 'Liger' appealed and struck the bull's eye.

One of the major reasons why this generation of Hindi film viewers is giving the southerners a longer time under the spotlight could be because of a series of big budget, path breaking kind of productions which have made a solid impression over the past five years and more. 'Baahubali' in 2015 opened the floodgates with many mega ventures making their presence at a pan-Indian level in Kannada (KGF series) and Tamil.

It has even come to a situation where the south Indian films are being hailed as innovative, original and clutter-breaking in contrast to Hindi films which are considered monotonous and not catering to the changing mindsets of the new film watchers all over India. With many box-office failures of much-expected films in Hindi and the Khans clearly on the wane, for the present, the variety-seeking movie fan is all for southern cinema. Herein lies the best chance for their long- neglected talents to claim their space and retain it as a legitimate one for the kind of cinema it has been producing for its fans the world over. After all, Telugu cinema has been quantitatively at a higher level for a long time in India for the number of films canned and it's time now for seizing the qualitative slot as well.

The relay race has gone on

A full thirty years after he made his Hindi film debut with ' Anari' in 1993, ' Victory' Venkatesh is being featured once again in a Mumbai production ' Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan' spearheaded by Salman Khan, an Eid 2023 release. It speaks volumes about the longevity of the southern film heroes of the 1980s and also the continued strides being made by matinee idols from all film zones of south India in the past 40+ years or so.

In independent India, after a barely noticed presence of the Deccan heroes in Hindi cinema from the 1950s to the 1970s (Gemini Ganesan, Sivaji Ganesan, Akkineni Nageswara Rao etc.), the young protagonists of the 1980s were afforded opportunities to stake their claim as the older lot retired and these matinee idols began carving their own space in their respective film territories.

A close look at the launch of the erstwhile top guns of southern cinema in Hindi reveals interesting facts. 26-year-old Kamal Haasan was the first off the block when his 1978 Telugu hit 'Maro Charitra' was remade into Hindi as 'Ek Duuje Ke Liye' in 1981 and which rocked the box office once again in the Hindi-speaking territories. Following him was the Superstar (as Rajinikanth is known in Tamil cinema world) with his successful 'Andhaa Kaanoon' in 1983, which had Amitabh Bachchan essaying a cameo and when Rajini was all of 33. The Kannada thespian, the late Vishnuvardhan made a hardly impactful bow into Bollywood with his 'Ek Naya Itihaas' in 1984, with Hema Malini as his heroine, when he was also in his early '30s.

The late entrants were from Kerala, with both Mammotty and Mohanlal striking it in Bombay celluloid world with limited success only when they were 42 years of age respectively. 'Mana' actors from Hyderabad also made a beeline to the Mecca of Indian cinema beginning from 1990 and slowly fading away as the decade ended. As mentioned, only Venkatesh seems to have survived from that era apart from Nagarjuna who made a cameo appearance in the much-delayed 'Brahmastra' released recently. Among the trio was megastar Chiranjeevi too, apart from the other two names mentioned above. The three of them reprised their hit Telugu films and in all, starred in 16 films in that phase to mixed results at the cash counters. A point to note is Nagarjuna was the hero who made the shift from Telugu to Hindi in the shortest possible time of under five years from his 1986 debut, while Mohanlal took 22 years to act in ' Company', a RGV hit released in 2002 after his first Malayalam film was released in 1980.